Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, is seen on a television screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. / Spencer Platt, Getty Images

by The Editorial Board, USATODAY

by The Editorial Board, USATODAY

Wall Street wasted no time breaking out the champagne Wednesday when the Federal Reserve unexpectedly said it would continue jolting the economy with $85 billion per month in bond buying. And why not? Everyone likes easy money.

They're a lot less likely to enjoy the inevitable post-party cleanup.

The public has gotten a foretaste of how that will feel in recent months. Since the Fed began signaling months ago that it would begin "tapering" its stimulus, interest rates have spiked by more than 1 percentage point, driving up costs for mortgages and other borrowing. This is the unavoidable price of moving away from the artificially low rates that the Fed induced to avoid a depression after the 2008 financial crisis, and it has much further to run just to return rates to the historical average.

The questions are just when to begin the weaning process and how quickly to move. The Fed's answers, appropriately, have been "soon" and "slowly." On Wednesday, the board added "not yet." There are reasons, hinted at in Fedspeak by Chairman Ben Bernanke: "Upcoming fiscal debates may involve additional risks to financial markets and to the broader economy."

Translation: Congress, feuding over federal spending and ObamaCare, could derail the economic recovery by failing to do its most basic job: deciding a budget and paying the bills. So tapering has to wait, lest the Fed make things worse.

Maybe so. But the delay only makes the weaning tougher.

The Fed's controversial policy of "quantitative easing," carried out in three rounds (known as QE1, QE2 and QE3), has added an enormous economic boost to an economy in crisis. Since the beginning of QE2 in 2010, nearly 6 million jobs have been created, pushing the unemployment rate from 9.8% down to 7.3%. Housing, meanwhile, has gone from the weakest link in the economy to one of the strongest, thanks largely to ultra-low mortgage rates.

Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed, including his likely successor, Janet Yellen, should take a bow. But the sooner they can stop what they're doing, the better.

Stimulus, in its various forms, is an effective tool for a brief time when the economy is in the pits. But if applied for too long, or when the economy is already recovering, it does more harm than good. Excessive monetary stimulus from the Fed distorts markets, invites inflation and creates the conditions under which bubbles emerge.

One good example comes from recent history. The low interest-rate policies that then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan began in 2002 helped inflate the housing bubble that burst six years later.

Low interest rates did not force banks to hawk subprime loans. But they did contribute to a false sense of security on the part of investors in mortgage debt as their money was being steered into these toxic instruments. As the housing bubble was forming, neither the Fed nor other institutions recognized the risks. Like now, inflation was nowhere to be seen.

Today, a case can be made that home prices and stocks are approaching bubble territory. The former are at levels not seen since 2008, and the latter set record highs again on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Treasuries are almost certainly in some kind of bubble.

The Federal Reserve's job, according to a famous description, is to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets started. Congress' irresponsibility aside, the Fed's bond-buying policy is starting to look like a party going on too late into the night.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view - a unique USA TODAY feature.